Online advertising and marketing currently employs a number of different methods in connection with mobile and fixed electronic information devices. For example, web search engines such as Google™, Yahoo!™, and Bing™ support ad placement based on search string key word searches as well as contextual advertisements. Web pages and emails may include banner ads, paid links, advertiser sponsorship content, links to social media websites, and the like. Social media websites such as Facebook™ and LinkedIn™ are commonly used for brand and product promotion.
One challenge faced by advertisers in general is the overwhelming volume of advertising messages and media that compete for consumer attention. Consumer attention is a scarce resource and attracting consumer attention and disseminating information to consumers is a fundamental challenge faced by advertisers generally. In online advertising, this has spawned the use of rich media advertising formats such as floating ads, expandable ads, video ads, interactive ads, expandable banner ads, and so forth, to capture the interest of consumers.
A relatively new segment of online advertising is mobile advertising. The increased capabilities (for example, high resolution displays, touch screens, app support, and so forth), high adoption rates, and large installed base of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices have resulted in the rapid growth of mobile advertising. For example, spending on mobile advertising increased 83% from US$5.3 billion in 2011 to $8.9 billion in 2012: see IAB Global Mobile Advertising Revenue Report, http://www.iab.net/globalmobile. Mobile advertising has typically taken the form of display ads, text messaging ads, paid search ads, mobile apps, and banners within mobile apps.
In this connection, the model of online advertising and marketing is changing with respect to mobile device usage. The number of mobile apps is growing rapidly (for example, there are currently over 1 million apps available on Google Play™, the largest app store for Android devices) and consumers already spend much more time using mobile apps than they spend browsing the web via mobile browsers. Mobile apps have become or are quickly becoming the principal means for consumers to find, discover, package, and present information, services, and experiences on mobile devices.
In keeping with this trend, companies are increasingly leveraging apps for mobile advertising and marketing. For example, in most developed nations, consumers are more likely to receive mobile advertising via apps than via a mobile browser. Additionally companies may develop and distribute multiple apps for the purpose of mobile advertising and marketing, and mobile advertising is also distributed to consumers via banner ads within apps, such as games, video apps, or social networking apps, such as those developed by Facebook™. LinkedIn™, Instagram™, Tumblr™, Twitter™, and YouTube™. Each social network app has its own user interfaces which have been optimized for the particular information being displayed (e.g. short messages, pictures, videos, etc.).
While advertisers and companies that provide apps to consumers for the purposes of mobile advertising and marketing often promote the apps on web sites, consumers are more likely to use an app, such as Google Play™, to discover and download apps on mobile devices. With millions of mobile apps available on various app stores, it is difficult for consumers to discover apps and to recognize the apps that are authentic (meaning they were developed and distributed by the corporation of interest to the consumer rather than some potentially illegitimate third party). A number of app recommendation and aggregation services have emerged that attempt to filter, rank and recommend apps to consumers, but these are often based either on user supplied ratings, which are sparse or oversimplified recommendations based on user profiles and previously downloaded apps. Similar issues exist in connection with social media apps: that is the problem of finding desirable brands, channels, or feeds, for example. Another approach taken by some original equipment manufacturers to overcome the app discovery problem is to provide pre-loaded apps or “bloatware”.
In addition to the above challenges facing advertisers is the increasing consumer concern and desire for privacy of personal information. Until recently, online advertising was typically viewed by consumers via web browsers on personal computers or laptops. Participants in the online advertising industry have been able to collect and store a wealth of personal information about such consumers including, for example, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, web sites visited, search words entered, and so forth, and use this information for the purposes of targeted advertising. Such information may also be sold to another advertiser.
In response to the increasing concern of consumers over personal privacy, some national governments have implemented privacy legislation, and some web browsers provide mechanisms to control the ‘leakage’ of personal information (e.g. private browsing modes). Moreover, efforts have been made to improve the transparency of how personal information is collected and used by corporations engaged in online advertising (e.g. website privacy policies).
As such, personal privacy is also a pressing issue in connection with the use of personal electronic devices such as laptops, smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDA's), and the like. Concerns regarding consumer privacy are especially acute with respect to mobile devices because, as compared to a workplace workstation, or even a home PC, for example, users tend to store large amounts of personal information on their mobile devices, mobile devices are constantly connected and mobile devices tend to be with consumers for the majority of their waking hours. No other device is more personal and linked to an individual than a personal mobile device. While users of such devices generally desire unimpeded and effortless access to online content, it is becoming increasingly desirable to control and/or limit the collection of personal information in the process. While there presently exists means to prevent or limit the collection of personal information while accessing online content, they typically involve some interference with ready and effortless access to the online content, and are thus undesirable.
Moreover, the increase in mobile advertising on mobile devices raises additional issues resulting from technological differences from online advertising on personal computers. For example, in personal computers personal information is typically better segregated than it is on mobile devices and internet browsers have features that address some privacy issues. Browsers typically operate in a security ‘sandbox’ which limits the access of the browser to system resources and/or files which may contain personal information on the personal computer. In a browser environment, for a web page to obtain additional permissions generally requires the installation of ‘plug-ins’ which then can have lower-level access to the operating system services than the sandbox. One of the issues with such plug-ins is that they can be very invasive and change the configuration of your browser and/or the underlying operating system itself (e.g. change the default media player or search engine). As a result, users have become reluctant to download and install plug-ins.
Mobile operating systems have simplified app development (compared to the PC environment), by providing standardized operating system services for apps to access contact information, device owner information, account information (e.g. email account), location, e-mails, messaging, telephony services and payment services (e.g. various payment “wallets”). These services may also be accessed by apps used for mobile advertising and marketing. This further exacerbates user privacy concerns on mobile devices.
In order to address concerns with respect to information privacy and security, some operating systems, such as Android™, provide a permissions framework (or discretionary access control) whereby a consumer must grant the permissions requested by an app prior to installation (e.g. Internet access, access to contacts, global positioning system (GPS) location data, etc.). The permissions are not granular, however—for example, the user must either accept the requested permissions or refrain from installing the app—and many mobile device users do not understand the implications of granting such permissions or combinations of permissions to a mobile app.
The permissions requested by apps may also be leveraged by in-app ad libraries that are incorporated into many free apps as a means for the developer to monetize their app. Certain in-app ad libraries have been found invasively to collect personal information such as a user's call logs, account information, and phone number: see, e.g. M. Grace, W. Zhou, X. Jiang, and A.-R. Sadeghi., “Analysis of Mobile In-App Advertisements”, Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, WiSec '12, 2012. Also see: http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepa pers/madware_and_malware_analysis.pdf.
Compounding these concerns associated with personal information privacy are general issues with app security. Developing applications that cannot be exploited by malware or hackers (secure applications) is a challenging task even for experienced application security experts. Mobile app development is a relatively new field and there is a shortage of skilled programmers and mobile application security experts. The increasing use of apps for mobile marketing purposes combined with the large increase in mobile malware (including substantially on the Android™ platform), make it more likely that apps developed by (or for) an advertiser or company may contain vulnerabilities that can be leveraged by another app or malware to obtain private information; this may then affect consumer confidence in the company.
Nevertheless, a significant proportion of consumers tend to be accepting of advertising if it is engaging, low cost and if it originates from a trusted brand, and are further content to provide personal information in order to receive custom advertising which matches their interests.
A yet further issue with current methods concerns the overcrowding of mobile device homescreens. It is generally appreciated that there is value to a company in having content related to the company, such as an app, present on the homescreen of a mobile device given that a user's attention is most often directed to the homescreen. In practice, therefore, app developers and brand managers seek to have their content reside on device homescreens. Given the limited space on device homescreens (typically there is room for about 20 icons), however, overcrowding and message dilution is a problem. Some companies have attempted to overcome this home screen crowding by developing custom launchers that control the mobile device homescreen (e.g. equivalent to the desktop on a personal computer) including the placement of apps on the homescreen. Such efforts (e.g. Facebook™ Home™) have failed due to consumer concerns over privacy (e.g. the launcher can be used to gather information on which apps the consumer uses and how often they use them) and the invasiveness of such efforts.
There is thus an ongoing and pressing need for techniques which enable the effective provision of desired advertising, marketing, and other selected content to personal mobile devices, while minimizing security risks and providing maximal user control over the disclosure of private information that may be stored on the device.